300 protest Gap in S.F.

Eric Brazil, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, March 7, 1999

1999-03-07 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- The Gap, a San Francisco-based national clothing chain, was slammed with high-profile demonstrations on Saturday by activists protesting its labor policies in the Mariana Islands and logging practices in Mendocino County.

Some 300 rallied to denounce the Gap at its Powell and Market flagship store. Eighteen were cited by police for infractions.

The San Francisco rally was among several across the country, including one in which activists marched up Manhattan's Fifth Avenue in the rain, denouncing the Gap's use of sweatshop labor in its factory on Saipan.

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"They (the Gap) are buying more from the island than anyone else," said Jason Mark of Global Exchange in San Francisco. "If we can compel the industry leader to treat workers differently, our hope is that everyone else would follow. Now, they're not even paying the federal minimum wage. It's not asking too much for them to pay that."

Medea Benjamin, co-director of Global Exchange, which has filed a class-action lawsuit against the Gap, said:

"The anti-sweatshop movement is calling on companies to pay a living wage, allow human rights groups into their factories and allow the workers to organize, and the Gap is violating all three of those in hundreds of factories around the world."

The Gap did not respond to requests for comment.

The San Francisco demonstration took on a definite North Coast flavor with the addition of a group of environmental activists who denounced the logging practices of Mendocino Redwood Co., which is financed by the Fisher family, which owns the Gap.

Mendocino Redwood bought 200,000 acres of mostly cut-over timber from Louisiana Pacific in 1998 and pledged to practice a more environmentally benign style of logging than its predecessor.

In fact, said Beth Bosk of Albion, there has been virtually no change. "They said they were going to be kinder and gentler, but they're worse than LP," she said.

"In the last two years, LP had really gentled down - it was trying to get rid of the property."

What triggered Saturday's demonstration was Mendocino Redwoods' move on Feb. 18 to send a crew of timber fallers into the upper Albion River drainage to log some big second-growth redwood and Douglas fir.

"There's not much old growth left, and now the Fishers are rushing out - a month before the logging season begins - to take the last of it," said former Mendocino County Supervisor Norman DeVall of the Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance.